Ephemeral Assays-Paper Rooseveltiana

We spoke in the last column of the gravitational pull of collectors, and of a fitting home for the inevitable disposition of thematic treasure troves. One such hunter-gatherer, Lyall Squair of Syracuse, NY, collected in excess of 300,000 Teddy Roosevelt items over the course of four decades. It would take a separate essay to chronicle his motives and methods, but the upshot is that the Squair Collection was purchased by the New York State Library in 1998 for $200,000. Mr. Squair could have realized many times this amount by breaking the collection up or selling outright to a rival, but thanks to a firm sense of historical propriety (and years of patient coaxing from the Manuscripts and Special Collections Unit of the Library), it came instead to the heart of this great institution. I had a chance to survey these boxes before processing, and a quick sampling indicated that well over two-thirds of the material is what we define as ephemera.

A good portion of this ephemera is virtually worthless. A print ad showing Teddy Roosevelt selling bottles of ketchup, torn out of a 1970s magazine, is only of value in terms of demonstrating the enduring popularity of this figure (President Chester Arthur, for example, could not return from the grave to hawk some modern day product). A hundred years from now such material, which seems so common to us, may be of more interest. A handsome black and white Swedish poster from the turn of the century shows TR pitching Tiedemanns cigarettes. This has monetary and historical value right now, because the former asthmatic would never have advocated such an unhealthful practice, and because the poster is contemporary to his presidency and in very good condition. In our first column we described ephemera as “the heete of one daye,” that which is not meant to last longer than the temporary purpose for which it was created. Survivor ephemera renders any collection ten times larger, more interesting, and more unique than it would be otherwise.

The timing of this acquisition was fortuitous in another sense as well. We are undergoing a great resurgence in the appreciation of Teddy Roosevelt. A sickly lad, TR rose like a granite mountain to overcome every obstacle in his path. Though wildly popular in his day, there was a time not too long ago when the bluster and militarism of the man led to unfavorable revisionism. After decades of partisanship and scandal we now yearn for a president who combines robust decisiveness with incorruptible reformism (I do anyway, and this is a bully pulpit to say so). Not that he was perfect by any means, but read one of the many modern biographies on this scion of New York and you will be surprised and delighted on many fronts. One of Squair’s finds,The Most Interesting American (1915), carries an inscription from one W.F.C., “a Teddy man,” which reads, “John Hay once said in the Century Editorial Office, ‘If you don’t want to like Roosevelt, you’ve got to keep away from him.’”

Lyall Squair produced a catalog of his TR acquisitions, housed in a black three-ring binder with the title, “The Theodore Roosevelt Library, 1961-1995” above a silhouette of his famous hero. It is arranged by category, and subdivided further by author, subject, or date. The largest category consists of “BOOKS ABOUT TR.” Although our main concern is ephemera, these books cross over due to their service to the larger collection, their inscriptions, etc. Let’s plunge right in with some curious titles, such as The Teddysey (1907), Monkeys and Monkeyettes: A Reply to Ex-President Roosevelt (1909), the privately printed Who is Bashti Beki? (1912), and The Extraordinary Adventures of Theodorus Gunpowder (1915). Did TR: Hero to His Valet (1927) serve its author well? Here’s the seventy-two page play Bully in book form (1979), with an intro by TR IV, in which James Whitmore portrays the ex-president on stage (John Davidson was doing the same thing in 1998). The Rev. S. P. B. D. Bland penned the eleven page President Roosevelt and Paine’s Defamers (Boston: Boston Investigator Co., 1903). From this unfriendly-sounding title we learn that Squair has mixed booklets in with books. Journal articles too, for the very next entry is “Ambassadors at the Court of Theodore Roosevelt” in an author-inscribed reprint from the Mississippi Valley Historical Review (9/1955, Volume 42, No. 2). I find one I’d like to read, Camping with President Roosevelt(1907) by John Burroughs. Titles requiring further research such as the fifteen page Roosevelt‘s Dakota Ranches appear with notations like, “no place-no date-no publisher.” The Roosevelt That I Know: Ten Years of Boxing with the President pops up in an autographed, limited edition. Can’t imagine boxing with Roosevelt. Who Was Who 5000 B.C. to Date (1914) seems like a stretch. One edition of A Cartoon History of Roosevelt’s Career (1910) comes with forty-three lantern slides. Many of the book titles contain fragments such as, “strenuous life,” “stalwart companions,” “greatest living man,” “man of action,” “happy warrior,” “great heart,” and the apt “paradox of progressivism.”

And paradox he was. TR the ornithologist could record the hues of breast feathers one day and coolly blast a charging cape buffalo in the brain pan the next. His earliest work in the following section, “BOOKS BY TR,” is a four page folded sheet privately published at the age of nineteen and simply titled, The Summer Birds of the Adirondacks in Franklin County, NY. Squair has a first edition and three distinct reprints, as well as the original proof manuscript! (Little did TR know he would be whisked off this same mountain range to assume the presidency after McKinley’s assassination.) Here’s another rare and serendipitous item. R. W. G. Vail was a former director of the New York State Library, and a famous antiquarian book collector in his own right. Squair found several limited editions about TR which Vail was involved with, including a four page item titled, President Roosevelt’s List of Birds Seen in the White House Grounds and About Washington During His Administration. As a local auctioneer is fond of saying, “Where ya gonna find one?”

On a more common note, if you can call numbered, limited, signed and inscribed editions common, there are several such copies of The Wilderness Hunter: An Account of the Big Game of the United States and Its Chase with Horse, Hound, and Rifle (1893), as well as a 1906 edition in Swedish. All the gorgeous, two-fisted first edition Scribner’s, Putnam’s, and Houghton Mifflin titles are here in multiple, such as Through the Brazilian Wilderness (1914 et al), but how many collectors have bagged “Mammals Collected on the Roosevelt Brazilian Expedition” as it appeared on pages 559-610 in the Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History (8/9/1916, Volume 35)? We find several editions of Rooseveltian Fact and Fable(1908 et al) by Annie Riley Hale, but only one of her slim supplement to this work, Bull Moose Trails (1912). The Winning of the West (1889 et al) requires two pages in the catalog, and includes a four volume Daniel Boone edition, limited to 200 copies, into which a sheet of the author’s original manuscript has been inserted! Not too shabby. The Rough Riders (orAlone In Cuba as one contemporary needled) was his most popular work, propelling its author onto the political stage. One 1899 first edition was inscribed by a surviving Troop H Rough Rider in 1964, and it rubs spines with a Signet Classic paperback edition from 1961 as well as a Classics Illustrated comic book of the same vintage. (The State Library happens to own the original typescript of this work, complete with TR’s handwritten annotations, donated as part of the great Gotshall Collection half a century ago.) We find many different editions and printings of the same title (e.g., at least seven variants of Hermann Hagedorn’s The Boy’s Life of Theodore Roosevelt). Of TR’s collected works, we find the Dakota, Elkhorn, Executive, Homeward Bound, Prairie, Sagamore, Statesman, Memorial, and National editions-some duplicated-running between fourteen and twenty-eight volumes, followed by the parenthetical notation, “Have many single volumes from other sets.” This is all-important evidence in the movement to have Mr. Squair’s wife considered for eventual sainthood. Rounding out this section on works by TR are wonderful collections of published letters to his children, diaries in book and serial magazine form, memorial books, and such flotsam as salesman’s samples, advance copies, publisher’s broadsides, etc.

“BOOKS ABOUT THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR” includes eight pages of sabre-rattling titles. “THE ROOSEVELT BEARS” chronicles the children’s book adventures of Teddy B and Teddy G in a beautifully illustrated series penned by Seymour Eaton and published by Edward Stern & Co. in the early 1900s. There’s a section on books by TR owned by family members, followed by another on books written by or about seventeen different Roosevelt family members, not to mention Fala the dog. These include reminiscences, historical works, poetry, novels, outdoor adventure, etc. One cookbook simply contains a recipe for spice cake submitted by Edith Kermit Roosevelt. Squair collected blue, red and green cloth copies of this item. Many of these works contain family bookplates, or have calling cards laid in, and many are signed editions. One is inscribed to Squair himself by Alice Roosevelt Longworth. The Ideals of TR, with a forward by his sister Corinne, carries her 1923 inscription to one Albert Shelby Le Vino. “Le Vino was a big T.R. collector” follows this catalog entry. Most charming of all is the nondescript Sea and Shore, bound in cover-worn red cloth. You wonder why it washed up on these sands and will open it to hear, “Christmas/74, To Corinne from her brother Thee Jr.,” penned when he was only sixteen.

“SPEECHES, REPORTS, PROCLAMATIONS, AND EXECUTIVE ORDERS” is fertile ground for those collectors with a more political bent. Lyall Squair has two copies of the earliest example, a twenty-three page report TR made to the U.S. Civil Service Commission entitled Upon a Visit to Certain Indian Reservations and Indian Schools in South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas(Philadelphia: Indian Rights Association, 1893). You can trace his streaking political career from a Naval War College address in 1897, through his proclamation for slain President McKinley and his first message to both houses of Congress in 1901, and on through many pages of speechifying right up to the last here, a July 1918 appearance before the Republican State Convention meeting in Saratoga, NY. Many of the public addresses in this section are personal use copies (some signed), and include photographs, menus, floor plans, and seating lists. Some are surely scarce, such as an address to “negro and Indian students” at a Hampton Institute Decoration Day event, some are in shorthand, and one is even printed in Dutch from a speech delivered in Amsterdam. There are a dozen or so official documents signed by TR as governor of NY or president of the U.S.

Scandal does not rear its ugly head much in this catalog, either by dearth or design. TR was involved in a natural history dispute regarding “revealing and concealing coloration in birds and mammals,” in which some experts disagreed with his writings on the subject. Not too revealing or concealing compared to modern standards. There is a lengthy, privately printed 1914 bound transcript of testimony taken in Marquette, Michigan, Roosevelt vs. Newett, in which the latter is sued for publishing a libel which claimed TR was an alcoholic. A 1913 letter from his attorney, laid into this transcript, offers to reimburse the expenses of those witnesses who testified on TR’s behalf.

Rounding out the paper ephemera, we have additional lantern slides, stereoscopic slides, including fifteen of the Rough Riders, over sixty examples of sheet music, many bound, loose and mounted newspapers and clippings, and hundreds of post cards. Of this last group, many picture historical sites and events, some are boxed sets from his post-presidency African trip, but no connection is too tenuous. Any ship or hotel named after TR was fair game, and even an Ulaula fish post card (scientific name: Rooseveltia Brighami) felt the yank of Squair’s hook.

There are several interesting manuscript collections represented. The wartime papers of John D. Miley, an aide-de-camp to Major General William R. Shafter, the Commanding U.S. General in Cuba, contains some fascinating items, such as correspondence from the front, a list of authorized press artists and correspondents and the warmongering newspapers they represented, as well as his Rough Rider discharge paper “signed twice by Col. TR.” Correspondent Frederick E. Sturdevant followed the ex-president on his world travels, and saved many interesting paper items. Conservationists Clarence L. Parker and Charles Christopher Adams are responsible for seventeen boxes of preserved materials as well. This includes the history, early records, and publications of the Roosevelt Wild Life Forest Experiment Station at the NY State College of Forestry in Syracuse.

Next follows a fourteen page list of autographic material, going back to a business transaction record of payments by John and Jacob Roosevelt dated 1771! Many are important and/or official, but this body of letters and documents covers such sundry subjects as maple syrup, a subpoena, and the gift of a sewing table. There is also a nice group of political correspondence to and from Eugene Philbin in this autographic section, in addition to smaller groups.

A cornerstone of the Squair Collection was his acquisition of glass plate negatives from the files of the photographic firm Underwood and Underwood. We see TR at his desk, in a buckskin hunting outfit, at the head of his Rough Riders in Montauk Point, taking the oath of office for president, enjoying the rustic hospitalities of Pocatello, Idaho, speaking to cowboys from a decorated platform at the Alamo, planting a tree, watching golf and polo, hunting in Colorado, traveling in Cairo, and visiting his son Quentin’s WW I grave in France. One early negative is simply titled, “TR Speaking in the Sun.” If a picture is worth a thousand words, you can feel the warm sun on his live cheek again in an instant with an image like this in a way words would be hard pressed to convey.

This collection of fabulous glass plate negatives serves as a translucent stepping stone of sorts from books and paper to actual TR-related 3-D objects and artifacts of every description imaginable. It’s the dividing line where the NY State Library hands off to the NY State Museum, and where Dewey Decimal numbers give way to collection accession numbers. The National Portrait Gallery, with the aid of several historical institutions, organized an exhibit (TR: Icon of the American Century), which began touring in 1999. The printed catalog which accompanied this exhibition is a lavishly published guide to the various collections lent. In contrast, Mr. Squair’s typed list is simple, and its contents mirror the drive of the completist collector as opposed to that of the calculating curator with critical colleagues and limited exhibition space. Samples from both were on view when the national exhibition came to the State Museum, and I was able to observe the Museum staff selecting representative items for this pairing.

Going through the list of Squair TR artifacts in categorical order, with some examples, in one long roller coaster sentence, we find BANKS (“shoots coin into tree, bear pops out top, reproduction”); BOTTLES (imported tequila, after shave lotion, syrup, salad dressing); CALENDARS (various advertising calendars with TR quotes and photos 1899-1999); CAMPAIGN BUTTONS (trays full, and the cream of the crop in my opinion); CIGAR BOXES AND BANDS (five cent cigars with “TR head and shoulders in gold wreath on cover”); CLOCKS (“TR mounted on prancing horse”); COMMEMORATIVE PLATES (a 10″ McKinley/TR tin plate from 1899, a 1903 NYS Fair blue and white Wedgewood with a quote from his speech there); GAMES (TR and the Lions); JIG SAW PUZZLES (by Saalfield, Whitman, Milton Bradley, some never opened); KERCHIEFS (“TR and Fairbanks–1904–Protection to American Industries,” red, white and blue, 24″ high x 22″ wide); PATRIOTIC AND POLITICAL CHINA (mugs, mustache cups, sugar bowl); PLAQUES (bronze, hammered copper, profiles and quotes); PORTRAITS (a 1919 oil, prints, lithos, gravures); SCULPTURE (a large bronze bust by James Earl Frasier as well as lesser bronzes, a 1910 plaster African scene featuring “A smiling TR in hunting costume with a lion one each side of him,” a ceramic Lefton, a frosted glass bust); THE ROOSEVELT BEARS (all kinds of items bearing these famous bruins); TEDDY BEARS (a large amount, from the real thing and early teddy bear-related items to lots of plastic and plush kitsch such as Koosh Critters-he went way overboard here); TEACHING AIDS (most featuring all the presidents); and TRAYS (“blue ceramic scalloped portrait tile,” other early metallic trays). Under MISCELLANEOUS we find book ends, cake decorations, a nifty campaign siren, Canal Zone matches, candy molds, coasters, dishes and dish towels, Carry a Big Stick incense sticks, milk cartons, napkins, notebooks with TR on the cover, paper cups, paperweights, pencil sharpeners, place-mats, playing cards, a ring with “black stone set in gold with TR in raised relief with a light blueish colored stone,” silk thread, spoons, straight razors, tickets, U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt stuff (caps, pins and the like), period Teddy’s Teeth (“metal 3 ½” wide x 1 ¾” high red lips and white teeth”), a wooden armchair with woven seat (he sent this from Oyster Bay to his sister’s home in upstate NY because he liked to sit in it when he visited her), wrapping paper, wallpaper, and a woven tapestry (“Cotton 58″ x 55″. TR in a wreath in the center. Shields, eagles, scenes of the west-cowboys, cattle, hats, pistols, and dogs. Color brown, cream, red.”). At least it wasn’t on black velvet like Elvis.

Comparing the two collections, it’s clear that Lyall Squair excelled in his acquisition of books and printed ephemera-particularly with some of the rare and unusual items. As for the artifacts, many of the best examples were owned by Sagamore Hill or snapped up by the Smithsonian and other institutions long ago through donation or purchase. With the exception of a relatively few important and valuable pieces, many of Squair’s artifacts are more whimsical than valuable. (Their average age, for example, would date later than the average age of the paper items.) Squair might have secured the last four full bottles of TR Great American Buffalo Wing Sauce on this planet, but they only tell us what we already know about the man’s lasting popularity. Enough, then! I will let him rest in peace for awhile. As Cary Grant said to Eva Marie Saint under Mount Rushmore on Reel 6, Page 21 of the script for North by Northwest, “I don’t like the way Teddy Roosevelt is looking at me.” By: Shawn Purcell mail@balopticon.com

#ephemera

Reading and collecting Science Fiction Books in the GDR – A personal view

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I was born in 1969 and grew up in the GDR until its end in 1989. The seventies and eighties were a nicer time in this country than it had been in the time before. Some things were missed; we couldn’t travel to capitalist countries (with the exception of if you were over 55/60 or to special events for family members). The economy wasn’t very powerful but most people lived well, there was no unemployment, and you couldn’t fall deeper than to a certain social level.

Reading books was very important here and the government supported it with lots of money for libraries and schools. Of course, not for all kinds of literature. At school we read books by authors from the Soviet Union, like Scholochow, Tolstoi or Gaidar, and writers from the GDR. Aside from that, of course, classics like Goethe, Heine and Shakespeare. Our education was funded and solid–tests in the nineties showed its advantage over those of many other countries. And if you have only two TV channels to watch (GDR 1 and GDR 2) plus a few more from the western part of Germany FRG (officially not allowed but not suppressed any longer then) it is understandable that people read a lot.

I started reading very early and went by bicycle to the library each week. Soon I concentrated on Science Fiction and from 1980, I started to collect it. Science Fiction wasn’t called that in the GDR at the beginning. First, books were published by the Soviet Military Administration shortly after the end of World War Two. They were cheap paperbacks with stories by mostly Russian writers, for instance Beljajew and his The Tenth Planet . With the founding of the German Democratic Republic, the socialist part of Germany in 1949, the first GDR-SF-book soon followed. It was The Golden Bowl – A short novel about nuclear power and space ships, by Ludwig Turek. This and others in the following time dealt with some main themes. One was a kind of production novel: some (GDR or Soviet) engineers do an epoch-making invention, spies from capitalist countries (US or FRG) try to steal it but are arrested by the police after a hard fight. Or the revolution export: astronauts (here they were called cosmonauts) from a mostly communist earth travel to a far away planet and find a feudalist or capitalist society. They help the working class to overcome their circumstances (of course with some victims) and everybody is happy. That sounds simplistic and stupid but some writers (like Eberhardt del’ Antonio) packed all this in exciting action and so these books are readable still today.

Then topics spread: aliens visiting earth (no invasions, all problems were only misunderstandings; there was the thesis: if a society is progressive enough to space-travel, they have to be communist), interpersonal problems in extreme situations, and some authors started to use satire and irony. And further, some writers like Heiner Rank or Johanna and Günter Braun wrote very cleverly about problems in our own country under the veil of SF. If these would have been novels happening in present time, they never would have passed the censorship but they were published as being SF. Even the high-literature-authors sometimes used the instruments of SF for their own purposes, like Christa Wolf.

Another part of published SF was those of other socialist countries, mainly the Soviet Union. And that was it! We had the Strugazkijs, Ivan Jefremow, Kir Bulytschow, and these are highlights that show what this kind of literature can reach at its best. Else there were new editions of classic authors like H. G. Wells, Alexej Tolstoi and many others. With H. P. Lovecraft, Stefan Grabinski and others even some horror was published, but no modern splatter or anything like that; we had a very low crime rate and supernatural things were not in accord with our materialistic view of the world. And there was nearly no fantasy (with the exception of children’s literature), especially no sword and sorcery.

The last part was very small; it contained books by capitalist authors like Isaac Asimov, Ursula Le Guin and Ray Bradbury. Our currency, the Mark, was not freely convertible into the Deutsche Mark of the FRG or the US-Dollars, so everything that needed foreign exchanges was in low number and hard to get. We called such books under the counterbecause they were not displayed in the bookshops–you had to know a bookseller to get a copy.

Oh yes, about the name. In the beginning the genre was calledscientific-fantastic or utopian; in the fifties sometimes they were even sold as detective stories . But in the early eighties everything became less accurate and we said SF, too.

The books in the GDR were made very carefully. Paper was expensive and so every story was read by editors and subject specialists again and again; they worked with the author to improve the result. Often they were nicely illustrated. SF was loved by the people and nearly every book sold within hours. Some had editions of some hundred thousands, today Germany publishers are happy if they can sell some thousands.

Then, after the revolution that started in Leipzig in 1989 (I had the luck to take part and see this historic event) the great mystery happened. The SF-readers vanished. Thousands of readers didn’t like the new kind with space operas, BEMs and soldiers in space. Today, even large SF-publishers like Heyne are in their biggest crisis ever. Tie-in novels like Star Trek or Star Wars don’t sell that much now; years ago they were the big business and helped to bring out other non-bestselling titles. Fantasy and children books sell well because of the success of Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. A few small presses try to survive with that, but they don’t become rich at it.

GDR-Science Fiction became soon a great area for book collectors. It is a closed territory and with the publishing of a (nearly) complete bibliography by Hans-Peter Neumann (more than 1000 pages!) everybody can see what books he still is missing. The prices went up and some titles are extremely rare, especially for books printed in other socialist countries but in the German language (if one has for instance Aderca’s Underwater Cities, hold it or send it to me. ;-); it is worth as much as Sauron’s ring). The only problem is they used cheap paper that started browning before the books even were sold. I have the luck to live near Leipzig, where a company named Zentrum für Bestandserhalt is specialised in a kind of book therapy that takes all acid out of the paper. It isn’t very cheap but I have more joy when I look at my books.

A last few words about the SF-fandom. Every organization outside the government’s influence was unwanted. So in the seventies, the Stanislaw Lem-Club in Dresden was dissolved. Later things became easier and for instance in Leipzig the Circle of Friends of SF was founded, of which I’ve been a member since 1990. We often have authors from all over the world as our guests, so from the USA: Thomas M. Disch, George R. R. Martin, Tim Powers, Michael Bishop, Charles Sheffield, Nancy Kress and many more, and from the UK, Russia and other countries, too. We published some books, the best known isLightyear 7, a final book in a series and a kind of conclusion to the GDR-SF. We collaberated with editor Erik Simon on the Kurd Lasswitz Award for that (a kind of German Nebula).

#collecting

Book Review: Prelude To Tragedy – Vietnam: 1960-65

Flawed Policies Led To Disaster in Vietnam

The tragedy is “It needn’t have happened!” say people who were on the scene during crucial years of early 1960s

By: Ken Fermoyle

It is hard to envision this book achieving the success or honors (Pulitzer, National Book Award) that Neil Sheehan’s A Bright Shining Lie earned in the late 1980s. That is unfortunate. In many ways it offers more important insights into why, despite massive U.S. efforts, South Vietnam fell to the Communists

Excellent as Sheehan’s book was, it was filtered through the eyes of a third-party. As good a journalist and writer as Sheehan is, he simply observed or researched the events he recorded. Active participants wrote this book. They lived and worked down where the real action was, not insulated by layers of bureaucracy from the nitty-gritty of life among the Vietnamese people.

A Bright Shining Lie also examined the Vietnam conflict largely from the viewpoint of John Paul Vann, a product of the U.S. military, and primarily a believer in military solutions, though he changed that view later as a result of a close friendship with one of the contributors to Prelude To Tragedy, Tran Ngoc Chau. As even a hawk like Vann came to realize, conventional military tactics at best only dealt with the more visible part of the growing Viet Cong insurgency during the 1960-65 period. It was like trying to get rid of weeds by pulling the tops off, but leaving the roots intact.

Certainly military efforts were necessary at the time, but not the conventional tactics favored by the French, U.S. and South Vietnam leaders. “Winning the hearts and minds of the people” became a hackneyed catch-phrase during this critical time but that does not lessen the importance of the concept. Failure to understand this, and to understand the psychological, cultural, economic and especially the political factors it involved, was critical to the loss of Vietnam.

Prelude to Tragedy: Vietnam 1960-1965 focuses on the unconventional military tactics and even more important non-military efforts needed to remove root causes of the insurgency. Sadly, such efforts, even those that showed great promise, were cast aside or perverted by U.S. policy makers and a succession of subservient South Vietnam regimes that took power after the coup and assassination of President Diem.

As the book’s editors note in the introduction: “During this period, fateful decisions were made that led the United States and South Vietnam down the slippery slope to shameful defeat in 1975…The real tragedy of the Vietnam War is that it didn’t have to happen.”

Another tragedy is that few Americans realize that U.S. arrogance, compounded by lack of understanding, particularly of the peasantry, fueled the Viet Cong insurgency. There was almost an innocence in the lack of knowledge about Vietnam and its people on the part of most American civilian and military officials. We also had a military prepared for and trying to fight a totally different kind of war than what it faced. These are the factors that led to North Vietnam’s victory in 1975.

Remember that this was during the heart of the Cold War. U.S. citizens, bombarded for years by dire threats of USSR plans to conquer the world for communism, could be excused for their ignorance about a small Southeast Asia country. Most knew little about Vietnam; few had even heard of the country before it began to make news in the 1950s.

Our leaders, however, should have known better. It would have taken very little investigation to realize that the vast majority of Vietnamese people knew little about communism during the 1940s, ’50s and even into the ’60s. Few even grasped the concepts of democracy or communism. Those few were the intelligentsia, nationalistic activists and more enlightened Vietnamese. Many of that group learned about communism and communist indoctrination tactics while serving time in French prisons for advocating independence of Vietnam, land reform and other measures to improve the lot of the peasantry. (Once again the old adage proved true: prisons are indeed the universities of revolution.)

The Japanese released thousands of political prisoners after they ousted the puppet French colonial government in March, 1945. Most of the communist cadres came from their ranks. To nationalist Vietnamese, these people were heroes because they had dared to defy the French and suffered in prison as a result. Vietnamese followed them not because of any political ideology but because they had proven themselves as anti-colonialists willing to fight and sacrifice for a free Vietnam.

Most Vietnamese, on all sides and from all strata of society, were nationalists. Some historians and scholars call Vietnam “the Ireland of Southeast Asia” with good reason. It fought against domination by China for centuries, suffered under the colonial yoke of France for some eight decades.

When France attempted to reestablish control over Vietnam after World War II, only a tiny fraction of the 25 million population were doctrinaire communists. Indeed, one contributor to this book, who was active from the very beginning, estimates that there were even fewer, perhaps two or three hundred, true communists in the Viet Minh military ranks and 2,000 in all of Vietnam (Translated. Viet Minh means League for Independence of Vietnam.) Tran Ngoc Chau, author of Chapter 6, My War Story: From Ho Chi Minh to Ngo Dinh Diem, adds: “In 1949, in my Viet Minh Regiment 83, I knew of only two dedicated communists, both high ranking officers.”

(I must note here that Chau has been a close friend and colleague for some 15 years. He fanned my interest in Vietnam’s history, the conflicts that racked it in the past, especially during the 1945-75 period, as well as the causes and results of those conflicts. I hold him in the highest esteem and consider him my mentor in many ways. Thus, I was pleased and honored when, more than a decade ago, he asked me to help him write the full story his memoirs. It has been a most rewarding experience.) Some Americans who were on the scene did appreciate the situation in Vietnam during the critical 1960-65 period (including a few who were there even earlier). Chief among them was Col. Ed Lansdale, who at that time unquestionably had more experience with communist “people’s revolutions” and counterinsurgencies than any other U.S official at any level of government.

Lansdale was the model for Graham Greene’s “Quiet American” and for Col. Edwin B. Hillandale in the Lederer-Burdick bestseller, The Ugly American. He worked closely-and successfully-with President Ramon Magaysay in the Philippines to combat the Huk Rebellion. He headed the Saigon Military Mission in the mid-1950s. President John F. Kennedy, impressed by Lansdale’s knowledge of and experience in Vietnam, wanted to appoint him ambassador to South Vietnam in 1961. Dean Rusk protested vigorously, threatening to resign if JFK made the appointment.

A few Americans learned from their experiences in Vietnam but many did not. Among the former were Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, who first went to South Vietnam in May, 1963 as a junior Foreign Service Officer in the State Department. He was assigned to the Office of Rural Affairs under Rufus Phillips, director of the newly-created organization in a State Department experiment “to diversify the foreign service experience.”

For Holbrooke, it proved fruitful personally, if a failure overall. He makes a powerful point in the Foreword he wrote for Prelude to Tragedy: “In retrospect I think that what we were doing in Rural Affairs had little chance of success. Our efforts failed not for lack of effort or good intentions, but because our work was part of a larger policy that was fundamentally flawed.”

He adds: “My work in Rural Affairs was seminal. It gave me an on-the-ground view of the opportunities and limitations of America’s efforts in Vietnam and, by extension, elsewhere…[it] shaped the rest of my career.” Holbrooke explains that “Vietnam’s lessons were still with me” when he went to Dayton, Ohio in 1995 as chief negotiator in talks that ended the war in Bosnia.

Other Americans failed to understand the causes of U.S. failure, even in hindsight. One was Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense during much of this period. Bert Fraleigh comments on this in his contribution to Prelude.

The five Americans and three Vietnamese contributors to this book offer more valuable insights of what went wrong in Vietnam than McNamara did in his book: In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam.

One of the U.S. quintet was Rufus (Rufe) Phillips, a Lansdale protégé. Fittingly enough, he wrote the book’s first chapter, which clearly lays out the problems and some of the solutions he endeavored to implement while director of Rural Affairs for the U.S. Operation Mission (USOM) in Saigon during the early 1960s. This was Phillips’ second tour of duty in Vietnam. He was part of Lansdale’s Military Mission during 1954-56 and also spent time in Laos, so he had significant experience in Southeast Asia.

His chapter, “Before We Lost in South Vietnam,” details some of the egregious mistakes made at top levels of the departments of State and Defense in Washington.

Second chapter contributor Hoang Lac reiterates in “Blind Design” the recurrent theme that runs through this book: with few exceptions, Americans failed to “know the enemy.” A 1950 graduate of the National Military Academy at Dalat, he advanced to brigadier general, was a province chief and served in important military and government posts before the fall of Saigon.

His summaries of the backgrounds of Ho Chi Minh and President Ngo Dinh Diem provide valuable insight into what shaped these two protagonists.

The third chapter is “Counterinsurgency in Vietnam: The Real Story” by Bert Fraleigh, A Canadian originally, he served with the U.S. Army Engineers as a civilian and in the U.S. Navy during World War II. Later he rose to senior positions in various American assistance programs throughout Asia.

Fraleigh begins his chapter by making the point that major U.S. players, even in hindsight, failed to understand why things went so wrong in Vietnam.

“I am appalled by the superficialities and misinformation contained in former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara’s book In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. This feeling is shared by most of us who worked at the grassroots level in this [South Vietnam counterinsurgency] program.”

In preparing his chapter, Fraleigh reviewed trunk-loads of his own files, government records and the literature from 1945 to the end in South Vietnam in 1975. What strikes him most is “the persistent unwillingness of American military leadership to recognize that this was a different kind of war. Put simply, it was unconventional and it demanded a thoroughly unconventional response.”

Fraleigh cites just two exceptions to American unwillingness to combat unconventional tactics appropriately. The first was Col. Lansdale’s successful behind-the-scenes efforts to support President Diem and “stabilize South Vietnam for another six years.”

The second came when “President Kennedy and his brother Robert, believing in the necessity of an unconventional response in South Vietnam, pushed both civilian and military conventionalists to develop one.” Fraleigh says, “We were well along in the job when President Kennedy was assassinated,” repudiating McNamara’s In Retrospect claim that the U.S. simply lacked experts on Vietnam and how to cope with the situation there.

Fraleigh outlines his own extensive credentials in dealing effectively with local people “in the boondocks” and his theories, based on experience, on how it should be done. A key statement: “Experience…convinced me that world peace could best be achieved by helping equalize opportunities and living conditions among all peoples.”

Lu Lan agrees in Chapter 4, “The People’s War or War on the People,” that South Vietnam was lost because U.S. and South Vietnamese leaders did not understand the nature of the conflict. They should have heeded the words of President Kennedy when he spoke about the need for, and how to, combat communism in general.

“It requires a change in outlook, a change in tactics, a change in missions,” JFK noted, to fight an enemy that “relies on infiltration rather than elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerillas by day instead of armies by night…”

Lu Lan joined the local militia in 1945 but was discharged in January, 1947 “for reasons of social class.” (i.e. He came from a family of mandarin landowners and, he reports, was told that serving in his militia platoon “was a high honor reserved for the proletariat.”) Like the other two Vietnamese contributors to this book, he later was a graduate of the National Military Academy at Dalat.

He served in increasingly important posts in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) until the fall of Saigon, reaching the rank of lieutenant general. Thus, he had ample opportunity to experience some of the deficiencies and problems he documents in this chapter.

George K. Tanham tells us in Chapter 5, “Defeating Insurgency in Vietnam: My Early Efforts,” how he came to play a part in the Vietnam story. The RAND Corporation realized in 1953 that the French might lose and that the U.S. might become more involved in Vietnam. They began a series of war games (Project Sierra) to study all types of potential conflicts, from guerilla to nuclear warfare. Tanham joined as a consultant in early 1954, just as RAND began a guerilla-level war game.

“After becoming involved and observing for several months, I thought that RAND was ‘playing’ the communist red forces, the guerillas, in almost exactly the same way that it played the blue forces, the Americans. This did not seem quite right to me because I had been following the war in Indo-China and noticed that guerillas seemed to behave quite differently from conventional soldiers.”

Having studied the Belgian resistance movement and written about it in his doctoral dissertation for a PhD in history from Stanford, Tanham knew something of guerilla warfare. (What seems strange is that RAND think-tankers started their guerilla war-gaming the way they did. The very definition of “guerilla” makes it clear that guerilla tactics are unconventional.)

Tanham discussed his misgivings with a superior, Ed Paxson, who agreed that the games were unrealistic. With Paxson’s blessing, Tanham began studying everything he could about communist revolutionary warfare in general and how it applied to Vietnam in particular. The French granted him permission to study a broad range of documents, including intelligence reports and post-battle assessments, pertaining to their fight against the Viet Minh. He also interviewed many French officers who served in IndoChina. He discovered that many were seriously critiquing operations there, determined not to repeat the same mistakes in future.

“These French thought that psychological operations were an important ingredient in communist doctrine and should be addressed in counterinsurgency programs.”

Tanham delivered lectures based on his extensive studies at the U.S. Army War College in 1947. He also prepared a 3-hour training film on communist revolutionary warfare at the Air University. These efforts and a handbook for RAND on the subject went for naught.

The rest of his chapter details his continuing efforts to persuade U.S. officials at various levels, both in Vietnam and Washington, to understand communist strategies and how best to combat them. He relates instances revealing that Defense Secretary MacNamara and Secretary of State Dean Rusk had no inkling of either factor, and no inclination to learn.

Tanham particularly criticizes failure of the U.S. to find, train and motivate qualified South Vietnamese to lead counterinsurgency efforts and to govern themselves. He singles out James Killeen, who took over as director of USOM in 1964, for special criticism. “He knew nothing about South Vietnam and even less about counterinsurgency…and, as far as I could tell, made no effort to learn…”

Finally, in frustration and disillusioned, Tanham left Vietnam, “deciding after about six months that I was wasting my time completely.”

I’ve already mentioned my connection with Tran Ngoc Chau, author of Chapter 6, “My War Story: From Ho Chi Minh to Ngo Dinh Diem.” My personal feelings aside, it is fair to say that Chau’s contribution to Prelude to Tragedy is an extremely valuable one. Because of his unique background and innate intelligence, he understood the insurgency and how to cope with it far better than most Vietnamese or Americans. He proved that by initiating what was arguably the most successful pacification program of the era in Kien Hoa province, such a heavily Viet Cong stronghold that it was widely known as “the cradle of the revolution.”

It was so effective, in fact, that American leaders in Saigon wanted to broaden it and convinced South Vietnam officials to create a national pacification cadres program, with Chau as director. Tragically, the CIA insisted on changes that destroyed the program’s basic concepts. Chau resigned as director and what finally emerged was the infamous Phoenix program, a complete perversion of tactics that had made Chau’s efforts successful in Kien Hoa. Instead of countering communist influence by political, psychological, economic and security measures at the local community level, as Chau had done, Phoenix used assassination and intimidation as its counterinsurgency tools.

(Zalin Grant covered this matter, and Chau’s role in it, in detail in his 1991 book Facing The Phoenix.)

Chau’s methods in Kien Hoa were so effective because he did indeed “know the enemy,” far more so than any of the top Vietnamese or U.S. officials. He learned great respect and empathy for the Vietnamese peasantry while living among them and fighting beside them during his years with the Viet Minh. He fought against the French, acquiring knowledge of the political indoctrination and guerilla tactics later used so effectively. He had military training under both the French and the Americans. He incorporated the knowledge from these experiences to craft the programs he developed later.

Chau was one of many teen-age Boy Scouts who joined the Viet Minh’s National Salvation Youth in the 1940s. These fervent young nationalists, along with tens of thousands of political dissidents imprisoned by the French and released by the Japanese during their occupation of IndoChina, swelled the ranks of the Viet Minh during that period. They helped make Ho Chi Minh’s organization the most effective resistance group in Vietnam.

Chau played a minor role, serving chiefly as a courier for an intelligence cell until the (WWII) war ended. When Japan surrendered, Vietnam was in limbo. Japan granted it semiautonomous status with Emperor Bao Dai as titular head of state after deposing the French puppet government in a coup de force on March 9, 1945. Near the end of August, Bao Dai turned over his authority and claims to legitimacy to Ho Chi Minh’s representative.

Chau immediately volunteered for active duty with the first Viet Minh Army of Liberation in 1945. All told, he served five years with the Viet Minh, learning their indoctrination, training, propaganda and military tactics. He suffered the privations of life as a guerilla soldier in the field and at least one serious wound.

“Like thousands of others, I received no pay, not even a uniform, during the first two years. We had one rifle for every three soldiers, a submachine gun for every platoon, usually about 40 men.” (Chau once told me that he had no shoes, not even rubber-soled sandals, for nearly two of those years.)

From a rookie platoon leader in 1945, he moved up through the ranks to company commander in 1946, battalion commander and political commissar in 1947-1948 and head of the training section of Regiment 83 in 1949. By then, however, he began to question his allegiance to the Viet Minh.

He was being pressured to join the Communist Party. He knew of only two Communists in the Regiment at that time. He admired them, but felt that he could never share their commitment to communism. “Both were entirely devoted to the revolution,” he says. “Their dedication, frugality and bravery were beyond reproach.”

Chau’s religious education, family background and beliefs conflicted with communist philosophy. (He was, and is, a devout Buddhist.)

“I also had grave doubts about the ability of the Viet Minh to defeat the powerful French military. I believed that a compromise would eventually be reached between Ho Chi Minh, Emperor Bao Dai and other nationalist factions and that a truly independent, noncommunist Vietnam would result.”

So, near the end of 1949, Chau left the Viet Minh, transferring his allegiance to the newly-created state of South Viet Nam under Bao Dai. He graduated with Lu Lan, contributor of Chapter 4, in the first class of the National Military Academy at Dalat and served in the ARVN, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and earning the highest military medals in battle. He was awarded the Vietnam National Order while a lieutenant. Under President Ngo Dinh Diem, Chau served as province chief in Kien Hoa and mayor of Da Nang, second largest city in South Vietnam, and governor of the Danang- Quangnam area. He returned to Kien Hoa as province chief after the coup (the only province chief to serve under both Diem and the generals) and later was appoint director of the National Pacification Cadre program. He resigned in 1967 and ran for the National Assembly. He not only won the election but was elected secretary general of the House of Deputies. In mid-1968 Chau called for coexistence with the National Liberation Front in exchange for a peace settlement with North Vietnam. Consequently, Thieu’s governent imprisoned him on trumped-up charges of being a “communist sympathizer.” He was released and placed on house arrest shortly before Saigon fell. When Saigon fell, the North Vietnamese quickly arrested this “communist sympathizer” and held him in re-education camps and jails for 2-1/2 years. Ironically, a near-duplicate of Chau’s proposal for peace in 1968 became the basis for the 1973 Paris Accords. Meanwhile, casualties had soared as the war continued.

John O’Donnell (Chapter 7 – “Life & Times of a USOM Prov Rep”) and Harvey Neese (Chapter 8 – “Destination South Vietnam 1959”) were the civilian equivalents of the army and marine “grunts,” American combat troops who began coming to Vietnam in 1965. They waged their part of the war among the peasants, in the hamlets and villages of South Vietnam. They were hands-on guys, not striped pants bureaucrats. Neither one came from the Ivy League background of most State Department personnel.

In fact, O’Donnell came from about as far from New England and Washington as you can get and still be in the United States: a sugar plantation in Waialua, Hawaii. He majored in economics and history at Stanford. After college (1956) he joined the U.S. Army and served in the Psychological Warfare Unit, spending time in the Phillipines, Thailand, South Vietnam and Laos (where he met the famous Dr. Tom Dooley). Upon completing military service, he attended graduate school at the University of Hawaii, and then joined the Agency for International Development (AID) in October, 1962.

Sent to Vietnam , he was assigned to USOM and the newly-created Office of Rural Affairs under Rufe Philips. At first he was assigned as provincial representative (“prov rep”) for seven Mekong Delta provinces south of Saigon. His orders from Phillips:

“You go out there and work with the province chiefs and MAAG (Military Assistance Advisory Group) to get the Strategic Hamlet Program going and then come back here and tell us what we can do to support you.”

O’Donnell provides valuable background on the situation in the Mekong Delta area at the time. Problems included corruption and indifference on the part of some Vietnamese officials. On the plus side, he was “very impressed by the quality, motivation and high morale of the U.S. military personnel [all volunteers] in the provincial advisory detachments and at Seventh Army headquarters.”

Texas-born Neese earned a BS in agriculture at the University of Idaho and started graduate studies toward a masters. Tiring of school, he dropped out and went to Vietnam in March, 1959 with International Volunteers Service, a precursor of the Peace Corps. He stayed for two years, learning at first hand the country’s customs, language and the difficulties rural Vietnamese faced. Neese’s account of his two years with IVS is interesting and often amusing (e.g., his elephant ride and first attempt at roping bulls). His comments on the ineptitude of many of American USOM advisors are more saddening.

Neese worked with Nguyen Qui Dinh, who held a master’s degree in animal nutrition from the University of Arkansas and was part of South Vietnam’s Directorate of Animal Husbandry, to implement the Pig-Corn project. This program provided improved-breed pigs and information on how to raise them to the poorest farmers. The result: instead of 40-pound pigs that took two years to mature, farmers raised hogs up to 300 pounds that matured faster and provided more meat, more income and more fertilizer for the farmers’ fields-all at reasonable cost.

It was exactly the kind of program that, expanded to other areas and encouraged from the top down, was needed to truly “win the hearts and minds” of the Vietnamese people in rural areas. It was especially effective because it was a joint U.S.-South Vietnam venture, with American involvement staying low-profile, rather than appearing dominant.

This effort was too unconventional to impress top U.S. brass but the North Vietnamese government was quick to understand its value. The communists created a copycat program that duplicated the Pig Corn Project almost exactly. They even used a replica of the Pig Corn brochure, down to the Disney-type characters Neese and Dinh created!

Neese returned to the University of Idaho in 1961, completed work on his masters degree in the field of livestock, then returned to Vietnam in 1963 to join the Office of Rural Affairs. The account of his time there, again working in the field and living among the peasants, reveals the trials, and occasional triumphs, of Rural Affairs efforts in a very personal, anecdotal fashion.

The Conclusion of the book sums up the situation during those critical 1960-65 years. Reading the subtitles tells the story: Highest U.S. Policy-Makers Do Not Understand, Conventional Setting, U.S. Ambassador Requests General Lansdale (and was turned down, unfortunately), Beginning Of The End. The book ends with an Appendix, Bibliography and comprehensive Index. The Appendix provides a brief chronological history of Vietnam, from its colonization by France in the latter part of the 19th century, invasion by Japan, first contacts between the U.S. and Ho Chi Minh to the defeat of the French and involvement of the U.S. The Bibliography lists a number of books that cover various aspects of the Vietnam tragedy.

One can only wish that Prelude to Tragedy had gained wide distribution, while facing the reality that such a happy result was never in the cards. The adage that those who do not learn from history are fated to repeat mistakes from the past is all too true. American arrogance has not disappeared in the past 28 years and lessons that could have been learned from the tragedy of Vietnam have been ignored all too often.